Do You Need a Realtor to Sell Your Home?

Do you need a Realtor to sell your home? You do if you want to net top dollar for your home. From time to time, a potential home selling customer will announce that they are considering selling their home as a FSBO or a For Sale by Owner because hiring a Realtor to sell their home is too costly. Besides, they believe their home is special and it will sell itself because homes are selling like hotcakes right now. Here are a few reasons why you should hire a Realtor to sell your home.

You will sell your home for more money using a Realtor.

According to the extensive research completed by the National Association of Realtors in the annual Home Buying and Selling Report. FSBOs typically have a lower median selling price: $208,700 compared to $235,000. Thus, the typical agent-assisted home sale typically has a 13 percent higher sales price than the typical FSBO sale. So even with a 6% brokerage fee, agent assisted home sales were netting an average of 7% more than for sale by owner. The first thing a buyer is going to ask a for sale by owner to do is to reduce their 6% because their isn’t a realtor involved.

Only 9% of All Home Sales in the US were made without an Realtor.

Almost half of those sellers knew the homebuyer prior to the home purchase. How many people do you know right this minute who are ready, willing and able to buy your home?

You need a Realtor because Mortgage timeframes and requirements have dramatically changed .

88% o frecent home buyers financed their home purchase. Who is going to make sure that the guidelines are being followed so that the closing is smooth, accurate and on time? You or the buyer or both of you? Who even knows what the guidelines are? Go to the new government website for an overview of some of the new guidelines. Yuck!

You need a Realtor because A Sign in the Yard isn’t Enough.

92% of home buyers used the internet to view homes. 91% of all home purchases were made with the assistance of a Realtor. For more than half of buyers finding the right home was the most difficult step in the home buying process . Imagine how much more difficult it will be to find your home if its not even listed. A for sale by owner seller is hoping that a well qualified pre-approved buyer will happen to drive down their street see their yard sign and want to buy their home. Maybe they will get lucky and someone they know will buy their home. It can happen but it usually doesn’t. Even if it does, how does the for sale by owner know that they sold their home for top dollar?

You need a Realtor because You Do Not Have a lot of Free Time.

Will you be able to show your home to a potential buyer with very little notice? Someone has to qualify the buyer. Someone has to be schedule the inspections, the appraisal and so forth. Seems like a lot of work to ultimately make less money on the sale of your home.